The present invention relates to confectionery products and in particular to frozen, chilled or ambient confectionery products wherein a confectionery material, including such as an ice cream, contains pieces of chocolate or other fat-containing confectionery material dispersed therein.
Ice cream products are known which have dispersed therein ingredients such as nuts, raisins, seeds, fruits, coconut flake, miniature marshmallows, candies or chocolate chips in order to impart certain specific organoleptic characteristics. Such ingredients can be inserted in a controlled manner into a flowing stream of ice cream by means of standard ingredient feeders commonly used in the ice cream industry. One kind of ingredient feeder is a continuous ingredient feeder manufactured by APV, Model S-420, in which positive, accurate metering is accomplished by means of an agitator and auger feed combination which transfers the ingredients from the main hopper, usually at room temperature, onto an enrobing rotor at a controlled rate of speed. The controlled speed and smooth action of the agitator and auger assure gentle handling without damage to the ingredients. This works very well for the sturdy ingredients such as nuts and seeds and for the more flexible products such as raisins and miniature marshmallows. With regard to chocolate chips, which do not have any particular recognizable shape and consist of particles whose maximum dimensions are generally less than 5 mm, usually from 1-3 mm, the actual shape of the chips is of little significance, the desired effect of the presence of chocolate chips in ice cream being almost entirely organoleptic.
However, there has been a desire to have a novelty product, particularly one with a visual appearance which adds to the interest and amusement of children, comprising ice cream in which are dispersed discrete pieces of shaped chocolate or a fat-containing confectionery material having specific characteristic shapes, e.g. images of cartoon animals, dinosaurs, stars, letters of the alphabet, etc. Due to their relatively small size, many of these shapes or parts thereof may be rather delicate, and clearly, in order to maintain their novelty value, it is important that any damage or breakage during production and storage is minimized, and up until now, it has not been possible to distribute shaped products into ice cream economically.
Although it is possible to produce shaped chocolate or fat-containing confectionery pieces by traditional forming methods such as roller forming or liquid-state moulding, these methods are costly in operation and the investment required to produce a different shape is large due to the need for new sets of moulds or forming rollers.
European Patent Application Publication No. 0 603 467 (hereinafter "EP-A-0603467"), the contents of which are hereby incorporated into the present specification, a process is described for the cold extrusion of chocolate, which process enables the cost-effective production of large quantities of extruded, shaped chocolate pieces for incorporation into confectionery products. Since a new shape only requires investment in a new die (or dies) the relative cost of changing to a different shape is very low compared to other methods. This process therefore gives an economically viable method to produce large quantities of shaped chocolate or fat-containing confectionery pieces.
Furthermore, the production of very small shaped pieces by traditional moulding techniques, is not reliable in view of the difficulty in controlling deposit shot weight as well as accuracy of positioning of the mould and demoulding of the final product. The cold extrusion process of EP-A0603467, however enables shapes with very high definition two dimensional outlines to be produced.
Moreover, roller forming techniques inevitably results in a web of chocolate between the shapes emanating from the gap between the rollers, this web is difficult to remove from complex shapes and would therefore reduce the shape definition of the final product. In the cold extrusion process of EP-A-0603467, however no such webbing exists.